Adam Slater - Hunted

Then he added with fierce determination, ‘And I’m going to beat it.’

The room is dark, but for the open fire. Alone and pacing before the flames, a man waits. Everything about him is restless. He runs his hands through his hair, then crosses his arms and sighs. He stamps one foot as he pivots, back and forth, back and forth, up and down the dark room. Every now and then he stares intensely at the fire. Seeing nothing, he continues his relentless pacing.

Up and down the room. Another sigh. Another glance at the fire.

The man stops. Suddenly, in the flames, he sees the sign he is watching for. The fire has changed. Its flames have turned violet – a bright, cold, blue-purple, the colour of black light. The white cuff at the man’s wrist and the jewel set in his ring glow unnaturally in the strange light. Everything else is cast into darkness.

In the depths of the blue and purple flames, a face appears. Its features are all wrong – ruby-red eyes too far apart to be human, the pupils slitted like a goat’s, pointed teeth that are pitted like pumice stone.

The man nods to the evil face. It is a greeting. He shows no sign of fear or surprise that a monster has appeared in his fire. This is what he was expecting, what he has been waiting for. But he is fearful about what he has to report to the demonic face. He is the bearer of bad news.

The demon’s voice is like the hiss of water thrown into a blaze.

‘Well?’

The man answers reluctantly. ‘Our assassin has been destroyed.’

‘How so?’

‘A Grim.’

The demon’s features writhe. Having no visible body to shrug its shoulders with, it shows its indifference with a twist of its mouth.

‘One Fetch matters little,’ the demon spits. ‘It was a vain and shallow creature. The Hunter! But it has performed its task well. The chime children are dead and still the mortals live in ignorance of the shadow realm, imagining its beings are merely the stuff of folk tale and nightmare.

‘When the Shadowing comes,’ the creature continues, ‘and the boundaries are open, with the chime children gone there will be no resistance to our army. We will fix the gateways between the worlds so that they will remain open forever. The realm of mortals will be ours for the taking.’

The man shifts uncomfortably on his feet, his hands behind his back, like a soldier facing a superior officer.

‘Not all the chime children have been slain,’ he reveals.

The demon pauses dangerously.

‘How many remain?’

The man hesitates.

‘One.’

The demon laughs, a sound of spitting sparks, like drops of water sizzling in hot oil.

‘One!’ The glowing red eyes crinkle with amusement. ‘One!’ The demon howls with laughter again. ‘What is one? Rest easy, friend. One chime child against all the demon force of the Netherworld? They will be as a pebble before the tide.’

The demon’s laughter dies away.

‘Prepare yourself. We are coming.’